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Eric writes "After over a year of development, Minecraft has hit Beta status today. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009. With the new milestone, the price of the game has increased to €14.95; when Minecraft moves beyond beta status, it will sell for €20.00. The beta is more focused on polish and content. The aim is to add proper modding support via a stable API, some kind of non-intrusive narrative to help drive the game experience early on, and a late-game goal. Updates will be less frequent, so as to make sure stability is maintained thanks to more extended testing. Despite this, there have already been two beta releases: client and server Beta 1.0 followed quickly by client 1.0_01."

Full daylight provides the maximum brightness of 15. Each value below this is 80% as bright as the one above it. For example, 14 is 80% as bright as sunlight, and 13 is 64% bright.

Torches emit light level 14 and monsters spawn at light level 7 or below. Light levels drop by one for every block away from the source. So if you aren't placing light sources about every 5 or so blocks, you will be working in the dark when the sun goes down/you go underground and you'll be always doing the Crazy Ivan to check for Creepers sneaking up on you.

Coal and wood aren't exactly rare, I've gone on simple 'camping' trips above ground and come back with two or more stacks of coal by the end of the day, and wood is even easier to collect. Your problem is you want your world to match your aesthetics rather than how the game was setup.